2009 Season, Pitching

Friday’s Bloops and Blasts

12 Comments

A bunch of stuff that I should highlight or comment on that I just haven’t gotten around to doing so I’ll let others do it for me:

  • Ian drops the hammer on Dontrelle after yesterday’s debacle. I give Ian credit for coming strong (damn, I sound like Jim Rome). I’ve yet to comment because while I’ve watched the replay, I still can’t even digest what happened. So take it away Ian: D-Train Disaster: Red Sox 6, Tigers 3 – Bless You Boys

    Congratulations, Dontrelle. You pitched well enough in the first four years of your career to get a $29 million contract. You benefited from a career-worst decision by a general manager and owner who felt they needed to push their team through an open championship window before it closed. You got to cash in on a 22-win season that took place four years ago. Kudos to you, sir. But this has been a massive failure. Seriously, man – you and the Tigers should be done professionally.

  • Here is a look at Edwin Jackson’s Success Through Pitchf/x. It’s one of those posts that I’ve been wanting to do. It looks like the slider has more down action this year than last. (h/t Bless You Boys)

  • The folks at It’s Just Sports just relaunched their blog, and I was honored to be part of the Better Know a Blogger feature this week.
  • The Tigers recent struggles have people wanting change. Kurt takes a rational look some of the options the Tigers may have
  • And from the Good News department, Rick Porcello was AL Rookie of the Month and Justin Verlander took him the AL Pitcher of the month honors

12 thoughts on “Friday’s Bloops and Blasts”

  1. Well billfer, we’ve got something in common…Sweet Lou is my All-Time Tiger as well. 🙂

  2. In response to Ian and Hurt’s blogs, I hate it when fans like them are overly critical of the Tigers. Some people just can’t see the big picture. Fact is, we have one of the best pitching staffs in the American League right now. Other teams could only wish they had our problems.

    Dropping any of the contracts on this roster would be asinine. IMO, every single team in baseball would be willing to put Willis on their roster to see what he can do. It would be the dumbest move of all time to drop him.

    I watched the game yesterday and was mostly annoyed that every pitch Willis threw some jackass fan was yelling at him. I couldn’t tone it out, so I’m not sure that Willis could either. It’s BULL CRAP that we have idiot fans like that at home games. He was even yelling at Minor when he took over. Fortunately somebody shut that guy up and we didn’t give up a run for the rest of the game.

    We only have Lyon on a 1 year deal. He’s here because he has a track record for throwing strikes. Problem is his control is way off and he’s been walking hitters far more than normal. If Rick Knapp is as a good as people say he is, then Lyon should be an easy fix. There really isn’t much to Lyon’s mechanics.

    If our pitching isn’t good enough for anyone, then blame the pitching coach like everyone did last year with Chuck Hernandez.

  3. The easiest thing to do when Willis loses it is to get him out of the game ASAP. Yesterday, Leyland yanked him with a 3-2 lead, but Minor was terrible and blew the game.

    Willis can throw brilliantly when he’s on his game. He looked fantastic for the 1st 2 innings. A few games before he threw that 1 hitter. There is a solution for utilizing Willis at his best, Leyland just has to find it. Like some people mentioned, we should of used Zumaya instead of Minor to get out of that jam.

    1. OK, it’s Miner, not Minor. And he’s to blame for the 5 runs Willis gave up without a hit or error that inning?

      1. The runs are charged to Willis. No one is exonerating Willis. But Miner is just as much at fault. His job is to strand those runners. Period.

        If a run scores on a fielder’s choice, that’s one thing. But every single runner Willis put on base (and then some) Miner let score. UNACCEPTABLE. PERIOD.

    2. Miner blew it? He wasn’t terrific, but Willis dug himself quite a hole.

      The solution for “utilizing Willis at his best” is to make him a long reliever. He has an over 8ERA and a 56ERA+ with us.

      We do have a good pitching staff, but it has several duds. Do you credit Knapp for giving Verlander or Jackson the ability to reach 100? Or being able to have terrific offspeed stuff?

      Verlander has been dominant before(2006 and 2007 remember the no hitter?) and Jackson has had top of the line stuff since he was scouted. I guess you could say he preached throwing strikes, but still a lot of the credit has to go to their talent level and maturation. With some credit going to Knapp – but some being taken away for guys like Lyon or Robertson or Willis or MinEr. You can’t have it both ways. He either gets credit and blame or he gets nothing.

      If Bondo comes back strong and Willis is booted from the rotation it is that much better.

  4. While I’m inclined to give Dontrelle another start (and hope that yesterday was just a case of a shaky pitcher getting intimidated by a tough team), I’m beginning to seriously think it’s time for him to start The Rick Ankiel Reincarnation Process. The guy had .856 OPS in his last year in Florida in 80 ABs. That’s a start.

    Tigers are paying him either way – try and get some value out of those dollars, rather than giving up.

    1. Dontrelle isn’t nearly as athletic as Ankiel and is missing the arm that Ankiel has as well. So basically you’ve got a defensive liability (without checking the numbers, I believe Ankiel is a liability as well, but he gets some of that back with his arm, albeit not much) who’s left handed and basically is only a pinch-hitter. I say bite the bullet.

  6. Psh. Figures everyone would talk about Ian’s inflammatory comments and not my brilliance in breaking down Edwin Jackson from 2008 to 2009!

    (joking, of course!)

  7. Minor did blow that game. He doesn’t deserve to get his name spelled right after that.

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